• Cheating In Video Games Illegal Immigrants
• Cheating In Video Games Illegal To Play
• Cheating In Video Games Illegal Play
• Cheating In Video Games Should Be Illegal

from the municipal-cheat-code dept

In conclusion, it is clear that intellectual property rights enforcement is being used as a growing tool in the arsenal of video game developers. However, how these rights are being asserted, and how potentially infringing conduct is being analyzed, is a very muddled area. Is Video Game Cheating Illegal? Video Game Cheats illegal? Most people have found many ways to cheat in there video games both individual and online. Most websites prohibit cheating in online games as it is unfair to the other. South Korea Makes Game Hacking Illegal. Distributing programs to modify or gain an advantage during play incurs fines of up to $43,000 or 5 years in jail. So too in video games. There is an immense amount of technical skill involved in any serious esport. These skills can be fast reaction speeds, precise timing, and accurate movement — all things that computers excel at. One common way of cheating at video games is to have a computer (or bot) automate technically demanding tasks for the player.

I have some admiration for South Korea's ability to look squarely at the national hostage situation that is its northerly neighbor and spend so much time enjoying video games. That this dedication to my favorite hobby occasionally pulls the country's government into putting forward dumb laws is an unfortunate by-product, however. It seems the South Korean government is still at it, as it attempts to join Japan in criminalizing cheating in video games.

In theory, this makes it easier for the creators of competitive games to crack down on things like hacking programs, aimbots, and other game mods that give players an unfair advantage in online. SUBSCRIBE for more Gaming Facts Patreon Nintendo Bootlegs This time on Did You.

And it has managed to construct this law to criminalize cheating in what simply has to be the dumbest way possible.

According to PvPLive, a recent amendment passed by the South Korean parliament bans the “manufacturing and distributing programs that are not allowed by the game company and its Terms of Service.” In theory, this makes it easier for the creators of competitive games to crack down on things like hacking programs, aimbots, and other game mods that give players an unfair advantage in online play.

Great theory, but this method for stopping cheaters should be setting off alarm bells all over the place. Criminalizing the violation of a ToS is a really, really bad idea. Our own CFAA legislation should serve as a wondeful primer on how broadly criminalizing violating terms of service can result in gross overreach by prosecutors who will use the law as a tool to jail people nobody thinks should be imprisoned. There's a reason why these attempts to use ToS to thwart cheating, or modding, are widely considered creative end-arounds to the actual law: because they're basically bullshit. Codifying into law the criminalization of the violation of a software ToS that nobody reads is casting quite a wide net to combat an otherwise small problem.

It's also well worth noting that most of the benign modding community regularly violates game ToS as they do their work.

But while this could deter would-be hackers from creating programs explicitly for cheating, the somewhat ambiguous act of outlawing any program that violates the Terms of Service has some League of Legendsand Overwatch players worried that non-malicious mods could be caught in the crossfire.

Look, eSports is becoming a significant enough industry that I understand the effort to combat cheating within it. And the online portion of the gaming experience is so center stage at this point that it would have been surprising if governments weren't starting to look at how to protect the industry from a saturation of cheaters who break the game for other gamers. But broadly worded legislative nukes aren't the way to combat a cheating insurgency.

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Addicting games sniper team cheats. Filed Under: cheating, crime, modding, south korea, terms of service, video games

There aren't enough game consoles in the world for our upcoming locked-down holiday. Good luck finding a PS5 for Christmas. As Nintendo similarly struggles to keep up with demand, the number of people searching iFixit for Switch repair guides has more than tripled since last year. Traffic to our Joy-Con controller repair page started growing dramatically on March 14—the day after President Trump declared a national emergency. It’s been surging ever since. At a time when so many of us are turning to games for fun, stress relief, and social connection, it is imperative for our collective sanity that we press every game console into service.

But if you talk with expert repair technicians like Bryan Harwell, they’ll tell you that significant obstacles stand in the way.

At Replay’d, Harwell’s Boston repair and game shop, one out of every 10 customers brings in a console with a broken optical drive. Not only does a broken drive mean you can’t play your favorite discs, but on most Xbox and PlayStation models, a faulty DVD or Blu-ray drive will cause the whole console to stop working, even if the owner mostly plays downloaded, digital games. Harwell has hundreds of Xboxes in the shop basement that his technicians could harvest drives from, but there’s a catch—an obscure part of US copyright law makes it illegal for him to repurpose those drives. All too often, he’s had to give a hopeful child a dour prognosis: the only cost-effective way to fix their console is illegal. The only legal path requires parts so expensive that they’d be better off buying a new console (if they can find one).

The root of the problem is that Microsoft and Sony lock down the software they use to pair their disc readers with their consoles’ motherboards. Shops like Replay’d could easily replace those drives by accessing the software pairing the drives with the boards. Instead, the repair industry is cowering in fear of a relatively obscure provision of copyright law banning the removal of digital locks that’s kept everyone from gamers to farmers and hospitals from fixing the devices they own.

Fortunately, Congress built an escape hatch. Every three years, the Librarian of Congress decides that, for certain products, circumvention of these digital locks should be allowed. That time is once again upon us. Next week, with the help of Public Knowledge and our fellow advocates for Right to Repair, iFixit will ask the US Copyright Office to make fixing consoles, along with other software-enabled devices, legal.

Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, passed by Congress in 1998, makes it illegal to “circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a copyrighted work.” In Harwell’s case, the copyrighted work is the firmware on the optical drive.

Cheating In Video Games Illegal Immigrants

Manufacturers, and the Copyright Office, have interpreted this to mean that maneuvering around the digital locks on your own devices in order to fix them is against the law. And the penalties for breaking this law are harsh, with fines up to $150,000 and even jail time.

The result is that too many beloved consoles are heading for the trash heap rather than getting regifted under the Christmas tree. That’s a shame, because the demand is there—iFixit’s Xbox and PlayStation repair pages get hundreds of thousands of hits every year.

Manufacturers argue that enabling repair will open a Pandora’s box of game piracy and cheating. But pirates and cheaters aren’t deterred by copyright law. The Entertainment Software Association claims that the locks are necessary to “to prevent users from making unauthorized copies.” They point out that manufacturers have mail-in repair programs and will happily fix your console for a fee. But when I logged in to Microsoft.com to see what it would cost to fix the drive in my Xbox One, the site told me “there are no service options available.”

If the manufacturers won’t fix them, then consumers and repair shops will have to maintain their consoles themselves. But all the latest consoles have locks getting in the way of standard repairs, and gamers are stuck without options. After modders discovered a way around the Xbox 360’s safeguards with a drill and a resistor, Microsoft built a custom circuit board onto the Xbox One optical drive. That game-verifying board shares a secret key with the main processor, and removing either one causes the system to fail.

Earlier this month, we took apart the Xbox Series X and the PlayStation 5. Both offer optical drives that let you enjoy your library of older game discs, but after trying to swap the drives between two of our brand-new PS5s (this is only slightly a humblebrag that we have two glorious new consoles), the console complained that our newly unwrapped copy of Spider-Man: Miles Morales “isn’t supported by the PS5.” We quickly swapped them back. Sadly, the new Xbox also pairs its optical drive and motherboard.

That leaves gamers stuck with a catch-22: the manufacturers won’t fix their consoles, and it’s illegal for them to do it themselves. That’s why we go back to Congress every three years seeking exemptions. And it’s worked: we’ve successfully legalized unlocking cell phones, modifying smart home devices and vehicles, and fixing tractors. But three years ago, they denied my request for video game repair—leaving console gamers in the lurch.

Not just fun and games

Game consoles aren’t the only things that are illegal to fix. Philips is suing companies who repair medical equipment for hospitals, arguing that they have circumvented digital locks in the course of their work. Sound familiar? That’s because there’s not much practical difference between the software in your console, your smartphone, or a ventilator. They’re all just computers. But the Copyright Office insists on defining these categories so narrowly that we have to apply for separate exemptions for each type of product. For instance, the Copyright Office requires us to apply for a different exemption for smart televisions than smart refrigerators, even though Samsung uses the same Tizen operating system for both. Accessing the software in the exact same John Deere engine in a tractor or a boat requires two totally different exemptions. According to the Copyright Office, the former is currently allowed and the latter is not.

Hopefully some boat mechanics will band together to hire expensive IP lawyers that can ask Washington to make their trade legal again. If that sounds ludicrous, that’s exactly what Summit Imaging and Transtate Equipment, two medical servicing companies, are doing right now.

This hodgepodge of product-specific exemptions is the result of a process that is biased against tech users. Having to go to the Copyright Office every three years, hat in hand, to ask for permission to simply fix our stuff is infuriating. Congress thinks so, too, and Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) has repeatedly introduced legislation that would grant a permanent exemption to Section 1201 for activities like repair that don’t otherwise violate copyright law.

Going forward

Cheating In Video Games Illegal To Play

A lot has happened in the last three years, and a lot will happen in the next three. Tech moves at a speed that far outpaces the Copyright Office’s exemption process. There’s no way current copyright exemptions can predict (and protect us from) new repair-hostile practices, emerging tech, or a global supply-chain breakdown. The Copyright Office may believe it’s protecting the content industry’s interests, but in reality, it’s hamstringing essential repair services—critical to keeping the things that power our economy running—with arbitrary rules and burdensome administrative processes. We can’t keep playing exemption whack-a-mole. Consumers deserve the right to repair everything that they own.

Unfortunately for now, we’re stuck with a broken law. But an exemption for gaming consoles will help people and repair shops get consoles working again, save more circuit boards from clogging waste streams, and get you back to playing your favorite games.

Even though manufacturers keep releasing new consoles, repair shops are seeing real demand to keep older game consoles running. Harwell knows there are some customers who—out of nostalgia, frugality, or a desire to appease the kids—want to fire up an earlier Xbox or PlayStation and jam with some old favorites.

But the inability to fix consoles without a new motherboard or time-consuming soldering work make repairs more expensive than they need to be. Tim Mentzer, owner of Mentzer Repairs in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, estimates that locked-down parts are responsible for about 70 percent of decommissioned consoles at his shop—either because of physical impossibility or because the required parts make it too expensive for his customers.

Cheating In Video Games Illegal Play

When I spoke to Harwell at Replay’d, he didn’t mince words, “Microsoft and Sony are being irresponsible,” he told me. “It’s irresponsible that they make consoles with a part that could be easily replaced so difficult to [repair]. You could prevent all the waste once the drives go bad. We end up with all these boxes just recycled and trashed.”

Cheating In Video Games Should Be Illegal

This story originally appeared on wired.com.